Places in the Heart (1984)

B+
SDG

A plot synopsis of Places in the Heart,
Robert Benton’s earnest, well-crafted period drama of Depression-era
life in a small Texas town, might sound like an assemblage of stock
plot devices. The crises, challenges, and confrontations, the character
arcs and relationships — in a sense, we’ve seen them all before, and
few of Benton’s ingredients haven’t been clichés in a dozen other
films.

MPAA Rating

Caveat Spectator

Yet this film, set in the town where the director’s family has lived
for generations, is imbued with a knowing specificity that makes these
particular crises and characters themselves, not stock devices. Benton
has a way of structuring events not like a scriptwriter, with
beginning, middle and end, but more like the way we often experience
things as they happen, becoming aware of them at some point in the
middle and losing track of them before the end. Events that might seem
melodramatic in another film have here a ring of truth, as if these are
the sorts of things that do (or did) just happen, and this is what it
was like to live through them.

Sally Field gives an Oscar-winning performance as Edna Spalding, a
wife and mother of two whose life is shattered by a sudden, pointless
tragedy. In the aftermath, she is confronted by a bewildering array of
hurtles which she never have imagined having to deal with, but must now
rise to the challenge. These hurtles include financial dealings with
condescending businessmen, a possibly shifty black drifter (Danny
Glover), an unwanted and ungrateful boarder who is blind (John
Malkovich), and a devastating act of God.

Some of the difficulties are dauntingly immense in scope. Others
seem trivial by comparison, but can be just as difficult to face, as
when an unwelcome discovery involving her son forces both of them to
confront the gaping wound in their lives. Field succeeds in making Edna
both fragile and tough-minded, defiant not by character or disposition
but by sheer effort of will, unprepared in any practical way for what
lies ahead but unswerving in her determination to succeed.

Watching Places in the Heart twenty years after its release,
it occurs to me that the some of the challenges Edna faces are similar
to those faced by Nicole Kidman’s Ada Munroe in last year’s Cold Mountain.
But Field makes Edna far more persuasive than Kidman’s Ada, in part
because Kidman never convincingly gets past her movie-star glamor, or
seems believable getting her hands dirty with farm work. Field’s hands
not only get dirty but bloody as well, and we wince with her as what
seems at first gentle work becomes over time harsh and abrasive.

Another story thread deals with an adulterous affair involving
Edna’s sister’s husband (Ed Harris). While this thread is as realistic
as the rest of the story, it never meaningfully ties into the main
story, and in the end it’s not clear that there is any satisfying
reason for this subplot to exist in the same film as the events
directly impacting Edna Spalding’s life.

Places in the Heart doesn’t overtly moralize, but it is wise
about good and evil in everyday choices and real-life situations.
Morally significant themes include prejudice, violence, fortitude,
self-sacrifice, and generosity. By refusing to reduce characters to
types, Benton maintains a persuasive level of moral nuance; one
character could easily have been a stereotype of oppressed nobility,
but commits a crime; another scene involves veritable icons of hate,
but Benton sees the individuals and motives beneath the mask of evil.

There is also grace. A key turning point occurs when Edna shows
mercy to a character who doesn’t deserve it, and subsequently receives
unexpected help and support in her own needs. Another character who is
misanthropically withdrawn finds redemption in slow stages, progressing
from ordinary decency to true heroism.

Benton’s premise isn’t without sentimentality, but he is clear-eyed
and realistic about how he lets events play out. There are victories,
but partial ones, mitigated by failure and sin. Even so, the film’s
vision, culminating in a coda with an unexpected touch of magical
realism during a Baptist-style communion service, holds out hope for
redemption and spiritual unity.